I took out the small notepad. My part was in here. Later, when my father picked me up to take me to his new home where his new family lived, I would be the character in this pad, in this play. It had been so long since I had thought of myself as Saffron Faith Anders anyway. Mazy was the first to write a new part for me to play, when she had my name changed and got me my new birth certificate. Last night, the train had only brought me to a new stage, not to the reunion I had imagined.
What of my real self would remain after all this began?
Before I went back to reading the information in the notepad, I opened the envelope and spread the pictures out on the top of the small desk. All those tears that had been threatening to rush out at the restaurant emerged. I felt them zigzagging down my cheeks and dripping off. The sight of my mother released so much more. Childhood memories flowed as if the dam that had held them back for years had crumbled. I could hear her voice and her laughter. I heard her singing me to sleep and going through my spelling and math lessons.
My body was trembling so hard. My screams flooded my throat. The rasping sobs kept them from emerging. My ribs ached. I embraced myself and rocked in the chair the way I had rocked on the train-station bench years ago when I realized Daddy had left me and felt the cold night, trying to claim myself forever in the darkness.
Finally, I caught my breath, sucked back my tears, and went to the bathroom to wash my face and clean away the streaks the tears had drawn across my cheeks. Then, after a few deep gasps, I returned to the desk and put the pictures back in the envelope and into my bag with my new birth certificate and my coloring book with its yellowed pages.
I returned to the pad and began reading details about myself. As he had said, he had noted that I wasn’t happy with any of the men my mother had dated, and there was even a reference to one being too familiar with me. That was the reason my mother dropped that particular one. Everything was done in a general way. I could elaborate on the details of anything I wanted. It would be like he and I were coauthors of the same fictional biography, my own soap opera.
Was I going to be born again, emerging from the cocoon that had been my world with Mazy? I hated to admit it, but I could probably accept this fiction and convince anyone else that it was true. This was the ultimate lie as a tool, I thought. It didn’t surprise me that my father was so good at it. He had been for so long.
And now maybe I would be.
He knocked on the door and rushed in with my new laptop computer.
“It was all set up in minutes,” he said. “Take a seat.”
I did, and he showed me how to connect to Wi-Fi and begin the research, pulling up my fictional hometown immediately.
“Enjoy it. You can see the world on a computer these days.”
He checked his watch.
“I’ll return at four thirty, and we’ll take you to your new home.”
I sat there looking up at him.
“Oh, just call reception. They’ll order you whatever you want for lunch. Okay?”
How had such a simple word as okay become so hard to say? It was almost profanity. Okay to what? To no more Daddy, to no more truth?
My new life had become very expensive.
I just nodded.
He put his hand on my shoulder. Did he want me to look up at him, invite him to kiss my cheek? I stared at the computer screen.
“See you later,” he said.
Yes, I thought, see you later, Daddy, just the way I expected I would when I sat on a train-station bench and opened my new coloring book years ago.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a long day, but all the study habits and techniques Mazy had taught me certainly made a difference when it came to learning something new quickly. Concentrating with her methods also kept me from falling into the whirlpool of emotions swirling beside me. The reality of what I was doing, what my father was making me do, continually prodded at my tears, pushing me to let them gush and simply scream at these bland nobody walls. Keeping busy was the only way to hold down the lid. I could almost hear my blood boiling.
If I wanted a father, I had to become someone else.
I took notes on the notes as if I was studying for a test, and in the process I tried to imagine this new Saffron Dazy my father had created. Truthfully, despite the fictional biography, there was so much she and I shared. Daddy had cleverly or subtly suggested what we would have in common. I certainly felt the same vulnerabilities, the same desperation the girl outlined on these notepad pages would feel. My mind was a workshop in which I weaved so many possibilities. Both of our mothers had died unexpectedly from heart attacks. Why not add that we both were the first to discover they had died? Chances were that Daddy’s second daughter, Karen, my so-called cousin, had never seen a dead person. I could certainly describe how I felt. I could do it so well that she would have nightmares. Right now, that result seemed pleasing. I couldn’t top the resentment taking seed in my heart.
But the story was there. Both my imaginary self and I had our fathers desert us. How clever my father was to make my imaginary self less than one year old at the time. What could I describe in the way of emotional and psychological damage? My father’s voice wouldn’t even be a voice I’d remember. Maybe that was what my real father had wanted when he left me at the train station. I had to swallow back those thoughts, press them down like rubbish in a garbage can and close the lid, but there it was. What are the memories for a child who had no father to recall, no father’s voice singing “Happy Birthday,” no laughter and smiles on Christmas morning, and no hand to hold crossing the street?
I certainly could talk about what it was like to see other girls my age with their fathers, talking about their fathers, when I was older. “My daddy this and my daddy that.” Certainly, I was drowning in envy, and why not? The first hero in your life was your father. If it was a good marriage, a good family, you loved him first through your mother’s eyes. You could fill a book with quotes like Your daddy will fix it. Your daddy will make it better. Your daddy will take us. Let’s wait for your daddy. He might have a surprise.
When you realized what romantic love was or could be, you were always asking your mother to tell you how she had fallen in love with your father and how your daddy fell in love with her. What greater romance was there, then?
And so I would tell Karen how it became painfully clear to me that fathers meant more as we grew older. I didn’t love or respect my mother less. In fact, she became more of a hero in this fiction. All responsibility was loaded onto her shoulders, and I felt a deep sadness for her as well as deep pride. Surely, Karen would know what I meant and feel sorrier for me. I wanted her pity. It might stop her from asking too many questions.
Taking my cue from the details in the notepad, I would describe how when I was younger in my fictional life, my mother hired someone or got someone to do her a favor and watch me while she worked. She had no higher education and worked as a waitress. We moved around Southern California a lot before we settled in Costa Mesa because my mother had gone from waitressing to a good job managing a clothing store in the Southcoast Plaza. From when I was nine, she often left me alone when she went out at night. In this world my father had created, he had laid the groundwork for Karen to feel sorry for me because of that. And with the way he had described my mother in the notepad, it was obvious that I could come up with any explanation for her heart failure that I chose: cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, or simply great stress and physical exhaustion. I could choose two or three or maybe all four. Maybe, in fact, as I had done with Mazy, I didn’t hang around to find out. Why would it matter? I was alone now, and blaming something like cigarettes and/or booze didn’t change that.
According to a note in the pad, both my imaginary self and I were by ourselves during so much of our early lives with no close friends because of how often we had moved. I easily could imagine what psychological and social issues my fictional self had endured, especially the loneliness and the insecurity. We surely cried simil
ar tears and had the same daily worries. Lies as tools were being molded and woven into a steel image for me to manage. This phantom would soon slip inside me and push the real me out to become the ghost. Someday I might even question my real memories and wonder what was fiction and what was the truth.
As the picture of my imaginary self began to form in my imagination, she gradually stepped out of the shadows and stood beside me with that same dark, depressed look on her face that I wore on my way here and now. Give her any reason, simply break a glass in her presence, and she would start to cry. The world she was in, like my world, was so tender and fragile that nasty words, sarcastic remarks, anything that made us the object of ridicule, cut like shards of that broken glass. We would bleed where no one could see us, especially in the dark, and especially in dreams. I felt like turning and saying, Hello. Welcome to me. I’m all yours now. Good luck.
Reading about her, imagining her, actually did bring me to tears.
I ordered lunch early because I had really not eaten much at breakfast. For a while afterward, through my new computer, I continued exploring what was to be my former world. Daddy was right about my picking up quickly on how to use it, especially for research. Traveling over roads and city streets using something called Google Maps gave me the feeling I had been there. I made note of any and every site a visitor or local resident would surely know. Finally, it was my tired eyes that told me how long I had been intensely concentrating. I took a break and fell asleep for a while.
When I woke, I suddenly thought about my appearance. How odd that it had not occurred to me to think about it until some vagabond gazed back at me in the mirror. My hair looked like spiders had woven it together. Besides not taking a toothbrush, I hadn’t taken a hairbrush. I should have had my father stop to get me some basic things on our way back from breakfast, but he almost had been in a panic, rushing me along to avoid contact with anyone he knew. I couldn’t help but recall being left at the train station with nothing really but my coloring book. It gave me a chill I had tried to stop so many times. I ran my fingers through my hair, brushed down my clothes, and returned to the computer.
Now, a little dazed, I was simply staring at it, feeling more like someone who had just stepped off a roller coaster. Moments later, I heard him at the door. As soon as I opened it, he rushed in. His eyes were electric. I didn’t know whether he was really excited or really very nervous.
“Let’s get it all together and get on our way,” he said, and went immediately to the desk to pack up my new computer. “Ava and Karen are eager to meet you. They’ve been preparing a great dinner.”
He looked at his watch.
“I told them I was picking you up at four forty-five at the bus station. This is the schedule you followed, the plane you took, etcetera, in case you’re asked anything about your trip here.”
He held out another slip of paper with dates and times. I didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“What’s wrong?”
“What if I make a mistake about this fake history?” I asked.
“You read through my notes, right? You probably memorized them by now.”
“Yes. At least, I think I have.”
“And you’ve been using the computer all afternoon and studied where you lived, all the important details, I’m sure. Right?”
“Yes.”
“So you know enough about where you came from and what your basic facts are, Saffron. You’re a clever girl. You’ll fill in the blanks beautifully when the questions arise, I’m sure.”
“But what if I do say something that reveals the truth and they jump all over it and then all this fizzles like some balloon?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, looking more annoyed than worried.
“But if that happened, your new wife would know you’d been lying for so long. You said your love affair would have broken up over your lies years and years ago. Would your marriage?”
“We don’t want that to happen, Saffron. It wouldn’t be good for either of us,” he said. I wanted to convince myself that it sounded more like a fact than a threat.
“What does that mean?”
“Jesus!” He closed his eyes so hard that it made his whole face scrunch. Then he took a breath and spoke calmly. “It means be good at this, Saffron. For both our sakes. Nothing more. C’mon. The longer you think about it, the more nervous you’ll make yourself. It’s going to be just fine.” He found a smile. “Karen’s no Miss Marple, and Ava, well, Ava avoids thinking about anything that would make her unhappy. It couldn’t be any easier for you.”
He pumped the slip of paper at me until I took it. Couldn’t be any easier for me? I thought. You could make it very easy. All you’d have to do is tell them who I really am.
He looked away quickly as if he could hear my thoughts. When I was very little, I thought he could. I especially believed my mother could. I believed it was something parents could just naturally do because you were a part of them.
Once again, I wondered, is deception easier or harder between people who love each other? I still believed that love requires so much trust. But if you knew someone so deeply in your heart, couldn’t you see a false face immediately? For Daddy, that never seemed to be true. Look at all the deception. Was I learning something new about him every moment? It seemed like every day was a Columbus Day now, a day to acknowledge discoveries.
I picked up my bag and my purse. He stood there for a moment, suddenly looking indecisive and concerned, but it wasn’t about the issue I had raised. When he spoke, it was more like he was arguing with himself, reciting his train of thought.
“You can’t fit the computer in your bag. You left quickly and brought it all on the plane and then on the bus. You could have carried it alongside your purse, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense, but I’ll carry it now.”
“Are they going to be questioning every little detail like that? I’ve never been on a plane.”
“No, no, I was just thinking aloud. It’s nothing. No worries,” he said. “You boarded and then fell asleep. Simple. Let’s go.” He smiled. “You didn’t leave anything, right?” he added, gazing around.
“Not a clue to prove I was here,” I said. “They should change the name of this place to Limbo.”
Mazy would have enjoyed my saying that, but his smile dissolved into a smirk. He shook his head, sighed deeply, and opened the door. I half expected a gaggle of reporters with cameras shouting questions. Is this your real daughter? What happened to your wife? How did your daughter get here? Where has she been? Why did you leave her behind?
Maybe I was wishing they were there.
“Remember,” Daddy said as we stepped out, “they expect you to be shy. It will be to your advantage to listen and not volunteer any information. When you’re asked a question, ask yourself the same question before you answer. I find that to be a very helpful technique.”
“Technique? To do what?” I asked. Did he spend his days telling lies?
He didn’t answer. We walked to a silver car. It looked new, and when he opened the door for me and I got in, it smelled brand-new, too. He took my bag and put it with the computer on the rear seat.
“This a new car?”
“Oh, yes. It’s only two days old,” he said proudly. I didn’t know anything about cars, but it looked very expensive.
He closed the door and hurried around. When he started the engine, he smiled. “Won’t be long before you’re old enough to take driving instruction and get a license. I’ll get you your own car.”
“My own car?”
“Sure. Why not? I can spend anything I want on my orphaned niece.”
The moment we pulled onto the main street, he started to talk quickly. It was as if he wanted to stuff years into five minutes. Or maybe he was really nervous, now that we were almost there and this was all about to begin. Maybe it finally occurred to him that we had little time to prepare for such a big deception and he was relying too much on whatever Mazy had told him about my abi
lities.
“I can envision you driving Karen to school until she gets her license, too. Ava will love having someone else able to pick up stuff for her. I have a tendency to forget what she tells me we need. I write myself notes, but I forget the notes and even forget to put it on my phone. When she’s nice about it, she calls me her absentminded professor. But she can have less pleasant ways of putting it. She might look pretty and dainty, but she’s a Saddlebrook through and through. Sometimes I think she was cloned.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Her father is one of those businessmen who believe weakness or mistakes when it comes to business decisions, almost any decisions, are sins. If he could, he’d rewrite the Bible and say, ‘God created the earth without any union members helping.’ ” He laughed. “Don’t worry. He’ll be impressed when he meets you. He likes people who have an independent streak.”
“I didn’t choose to have it,” I said sharply.
He acted deaf for a moment, like he hadn’t heard a word.
“Despite all that, we’re a family, a real family. We’ve even been talking about getting a dog, but Ava is a little worried about having a pet while Garson is so small. I’ll warn you ahead of time that she reads those rag newspapers as if they’re gospel. Sometimes we argue about the nuttiest things at dinner, like why the president might really be from another planet.
“Her father and I are always complaining about it, but she has this thing about men dominating women. It’s the way she was raised. From everything I’ve seen and heard, I’d agree. Her father did dominate her mother. He’s a fair-minded guy when it comes to social issues but a little old-fashioned for Ava, who sometimes sounds like a socialist spy. They’re always, or often, like two cats in an alley, especially when it comes to taxes and social programs. I try to stay out of it. The worst thing I can do is support her father in an argument, but sometimes I can’t help it, and later, I have to take the darts out of my back.
Out of the Rain Page 5
